This chapter examines protest in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Prior to 1991, street protests in Iraqi Kurdistan played important roles in perpetuating local claims and broadcasting popular perspectives in a series of regimes that gave ordinary people few avenues for exercising influence. Attention to such protests highlights the fact that the Kurdish struggle under the Ba’ath was waged not only by peshmerga in the mountains but by civilians in towns and cities whose public manifestations of discontent continually pushed the limits of Iraqi authority and validated collective action as a legitimate form of political expression. Since 1991 and especially after 2003, street demonstrations have played an increasingly significant role in Iraqi Kurdish political life. The chapter divides such protests into three main phases, each differentiated primarily by shifts in state society relations, resources and mobilization capacity. Initially focused on improving service provision and infrastructure in specific locales, popular protests soon broadened in geographic and political scope to encompass systemic reforms calling for the redistribution of resources and the rule of law. Expanded meso-level mobilization capacity combined with newly potent master frames and forms of mobilization helped build and sustain a significant level of popular challenge to Kurdish authorities.

This chapter focuses on the emergence and of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) in 1991 and its evolution since then. The Kurds maintained their strong desire to be sovereign over territories they defined as Kurdistan, but reluctantly remained within Iraq. The removal of Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 by the US-led coalition allowed the Kurdish leaders to strengthen their alliance with Western powers and consolidate their autonomy. The instability in Iraq during the 2000s and the growing dominance of Shia political parties steadily deteriorated the relations between the KRI and the federal government of Iraq, and the insurgency by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) from 2013 posed an existential threat to the KRI. The struggle against ISIS brought under Kurdish control vast areas of northern Iraq that the Kurds claimed as being historically Kurdish, but that did not lie within KRI’s authority. However, the subsequent Kurdish efforts to secede from Iraq, which faced strong opposition from Iran and Turkey, reached an abrupt end when the Shia forces took control of the Kirkuk city along with other disputed regions back from the Kurdish forces in October 2017.